1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a technology of designing and developing a mechanism which includes an actuator and a sensor and makes a three-dimensional motion, and more particularly to a support system for supporting the development of a control program (embedded software) to be embedded in the mechanism to control the mechanism. The invention relates also to a computer-readable recording medium in which a support program is recorded.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, when designing a mechanism, which includes an actuator (motor) and a sensor, and makes a three-dimensional motion, first a plan for the mechanism is made, followed by detail designing, preparation of drawings, and preparation of parts, whereupon a real mechanism is assembled of the prepared parts as a trial product and then motions, for example, of the trial product are evaluated. And design changing is made according to the result of evaluation, and then a modified trial product is assembled based on the design changing, whereupon motions, for example, of the modified trial product is evaluated. This procedure is repeated until a good result of evaluation is obtained, which requires no further design change, thus completing designing. The term “mechanism” means any mechanism exemplified by CD changer, MD changer, printer, and manipulator.
More specifically, for moving the thus designed mechanism, a control program to control the mechanism is developed. The control program is executed by a prospective microcomputer to be actually embedded in the mechanism to be controlled. The control program to be executed by the microcomputer is hereinafter also called “embedded software”.
According to the conventional art, by the time the control program (embedded software) is developed, a trial product (real mechanism) of an object mechanism to be controlled has been completed. Namely, the mechanism cannot be practically moved until after completion of the trial product. Evaluation data is collected as the mechanism is practically (actually) moved, based on which developing of embedded software can be started.
The developing of this embedded software is carried out in the following procedure while the trial product is actually moved. Firstly outline designing of prospective embedded software is made, and then detail designing is made based on the outline designing, whereupon the result of the detail designing is coded to create the embedded software. Finally the created embedded software is debugged.
However, as mentioned above, since a trial product (real mechanism) of the object mechanism to be controlled is inevitable to develop embedded software (control program), the embedded software developing cannot be started until after completion of the trial product, which would be money- and time-consuming.
Yet if the embedded software developing could be started using the completed trial product, such developing would encounter repetitious design changing of the trial product depending on the result of evaluation. As the embedded software developing is thus often interrupted, trial products have to be completed one at each occurrence of design changes. After completion of each and every trial product, specifications changes and recoding are required for each trial product due to the individual design change, which would cause an extremely inefficient development of embedded software.
In the conventional art, as mentioned above, there appears no concurrency between designing of mechanism (manufacturing of real mechanism) and developing of embedded software for the mechanism, so they could not be executed simultaneously. Consequently a technology has been cherished to accomplish designing of an object mechanism and developing of embedded software in parallel.